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Howard Aggregate’s Late Preview #3

Why is Resonance So Weird? is our self-critical round table discussion chaired each week by a different bewildered parent, mystified partner, or downright scared flatmate. On tonight’s programme the question is posed by Mrs. Ann Harley of Stevenage, mother of Resonance DJ Renal Failure – whom you may remember as the presenter of 2005’s late night atonalist round-up Uhhhhhhh. Trying to formulate an answer will be Mimi McDarmstadt, host of Friday afternoon’s deconstructionist Stylophone extravaganza De Stijl, and Ken Bruce from BBC Radio 2.

Wednesday’s drive-time easy listening slot Tunguska Topographies is now in its tenth year. It’s aim is to recreate in the mind of the listener the experience of being present at the meteorite explosion over Siberia in 1908. As this is the event’s centenary the programme promises a ‘cerebral-cortex splitting grinding noise’ on continuous loop from approximately 5.15 to 7.30. Among other featured sound effects will be old favourites such as screeching falling timber, birds on fire, and boiling mud. All recreated live on the factory alert settings of a 1992 Mac. Incredible.

Following the success of last summer’s Free University of the Airwaves, the Broadcastable Kindergarten pitter-patters its tiny feet onto the schedule this Thursday morning. Presenters Max Herod and Myra X will be introducing their own music and movement classes for 2-4+1/2 year olds using a variety of Krautrock and Extreme Metal. There’ll be storytelling from The Gargoyle Brethren with help from Fang the Pit Bull. There’s also a special one-off twenty minute feature, Electric Circuit Assembly Toddler Bathtime Apocalypse. This is presented by a man who likes to dress up as a Portuguese Man’O War and sing the theme music from The Banana Splits in reverse.

Sadly, Resonance’s Saturday morning breakfast cookery programme Fry Up Your Ears has had to be taken out of the scheduling for 2009 due to complications at the ENT clinic. This will be replaced on Friday nights with The Sausage Roll Museum. Aimed at late night microwave devotees, the programme will include instructions on how to assemble your own microwave from debris scattered at traffic accidents, and how to similarly assemble your own sausage roll. Yum.

Sunday morning has long held a special place in the Resonance week, but this Sunday is a glaring exception because the slot’s been given over to a rambling, self-promoting, Chas and Dave playing, narcissistic farrago of on-air tedium presented by my very own inner idiot, Howard Kryptonite. If you’re awake, and take it from me you soon won’t be, you might prefer listening to BBC Radio 3’s Live Hymns from Kettering. Register your disapproval of my inner idiot by signing the online petition at aggregatebeatskryptonite.org, and don’t forget to tune into those hymns.

Next week Resonance makes another dive into the world of the visual arts, a variety of programming previously represented by shows such as 2004’s radical-feminist Slash that Venus. Cutting in a different sense is Monday’s Scarfe-Face. Presenter and Private Eye drinks party gatecrasher Raymond Gill recites captions from his favourite political cartoons, all taken from obscure and short-lived Eighteenth Century journals. If you would like to access an on-line gallery so you can see the cartoon to which the caption fits, forget it. Quoting a caption from 1793 edition of Brown Dwarf, a Dumfries-shire Jacobin publication, he says: ‘What are ye looking at, ye stinkin’ mushroom o’ the clergy and foot-licker o’ the high-born numptie princes born from oot the bowels o’ Satan himsel’, eh, Lady McPherson?’

After the success of our email alerts (sign up on whyonearthwouldanyonelistentothat.com) this week sees an expansion of the Resonance service base. From Monday London’s finest radio station will be providing a very special early morning wake up call. Developed in the secret underground Reso Lab, it’s aimed at people who feel the need to explode from relaxing slumbers to the sound of something so mind-shakingly awful that nothing they face in the remainder of the day could possibly seem half as bad. Choose from a menu featuring Maribou Stork Techno nightmare-hell-on-Earth, Hammond Organ meets Hadron Collider, and Manhattan Transfer tribute band Croydon Tramway Day Pass singing Chanson d’Amour. Then before you hit the sack make sure your bedside trannie – better still a surround sound quadrophonic speaker system – is tuned to 104.4FM and the next thing you know you’ll be trying to bite off your own ears. Free with every Paypal donation of more than £7000.